Open Your Heart at Knifepoint
Sometimes, you just really need to read something like this. What would you aspire to do in Julio’s position?
Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner. But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.
He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife. “He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, ‘Here you go,’” Diaz says.
As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, “Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.”
The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, “like what’s going on here?” Diaz says. “He asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?’”
Diaz replied: “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me… Hey, you’re more than welcome.”
“You know, I just felt maybe he really needs help,” Diaz says. He and the teen went into the diner and sat in a booth.
“The manager comes by, the dishwashers come by, the waiters come by to say hi,” Diaz says. “The kid was like, ‘You know everybody here. Do you own this place?’”
“No, I just eat here a lot,” Diaz told the teen. “He says, ‘But you’re even nice to the dishwasher.’” Diaz replied, “Well, haven’t you been taught you should be nice to everybody?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t think people actually behaved that way,” the teen said. Diaz asked him what he wanted out of life. “He just had almost a sad face,” Diaz says.
The teen couldn’t answer Diaz — or he didn’t want to.
When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, “Look, I guess you’re going to have to pay for this bill ‘cause you have my money, and I can’t pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I’ll gladly treat you.”
The teen “didn’t even think about it” and returned the wallet, Diaz says. “I gave him $20… I figure maybe it’ll help him. I don’t know.”
Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen’s knife — “and he gave it to me.”
Afterward, when Diaz told his mother what happened, she said, “You’re the type of kid that if someone asked you for the time, you gave them your watch.”
“I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world.”
What do you think? Leave a comment!Configuring your Smartphone for MMS on the Rogers Network
If there’s one thing I love doing, it’s playing around with smartphones. I have an HTC HD2, and I fear I’m addicted to upgrading its software and running bleeding edge operating systems on it. So when I bricked it (messed it up so badly that it effectively turned into little more than a brick) the other day for the 62,498th time, I decided it was time to abandon Windows Mobile 6.5 and install Google Android 2.3.
If you’ve ever used an unlocked phone on a network that doesn’t support it (like an HD2 on the Rogers network in Canada), you may be familiar with issues such as your data connection failing to work, or MMS (picture) messages failing to send. This is because your phone needs to know where on the internet to look to get a connection. Phones sold directly by service providers come with these settings already configured, unlike unlocked phones that they don’t support.
If you’ve ever dealt with Rogers’ tech support department, you know that getting help with such issues can be as fun as trying to pry a banana from the thick, leathery hands of an angry gorilla that doesn’t like to share.
This post is for anyone on the Rogers network in Canada who happens to be seeking this information for a quick fix to their MMS woes. I found that the settings in my new Android Cyanogen ROM were entered incorrectly, and these are the settings I used to regain the ability to send pictures of my ugly mug to anyone I want to scare the crap out of an a given day.
Configuring Your Smartphone to Use MMS on the Rogers Network
Find your phone’s network connection settings. On Android, they’re located under Settings > Wireless & Networks > Mobile networks > Access Point Names. You should find an entry dedicated to Rogers MMS. Open it, and fill in the following settings:
- Name: Rogers MMS
- APN: media.com
- Username: media
- Password: mda01
- Server: 172.25.0.107
- MMSC: http://mms.gprs.rogers.com (make sure “gprs” is spelled correctly; on mine, it was misspelled as “grps”)
- MMS Proxy: 10.128.1.69
- MMS Port: 80
- MCC: 302
- MNC: 720
- APN Type: mms
An example of what your Rogers MMS settings should look like
Check the entry for your normal data connection, and under APN Type, ensure that “mms” is NOT in the list. This will ensure your phone looks to the Rogers MMS profile when you’re sending and receiving pictures messages, and not the normal data connection.
If your normal data connection isn’t working either…
If your normal data connection isn’t working either, check the settings in the other connection profile against the following:
- Name: Rogers
- APN: internet.com
- Username: wapuser1
- Password: wap
- MCC: 302
- MNC: 720
You should be able to leave all other fields blank, as long as you have the above details entered.
You’re Welcome
A simple fix that I’m sure will only be useful to a handful of people looking for very specific information, but I thought I’d share. Questions? Feel free to leave them in a comment or email me. Don’t thank me; Just give me that banana the next time we run into each other.
9 people have commented. What do you think?
